Sting in the Tail: Telling porkies (1993)

The Sting in the Tail column from the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Telling porkies

Clive Soley, the Labour MP for Hammersmith, has really got upset with the government—he believes they may be telling lies about the unemployment figures. Gosh, shock, horror!

In his local paper the Hammersmith Gazette (7 May), Mr Soley is quoted as saying:

  The Tories can't fiddle or fix the Census figures like they fiddle the unemployment figures. They used 27 statistical changes and all sorts of other schemes to get the unemployment figures down. The Census shows that you can't trust the Tories.

He was referring to a 13.5 percent higher figure revealed by the Census than admitted by government figures for Hammersmith. A defence of the government figures was made by officials in the same issue of the paper:

  Not so, the Department of Employment responded. It is simply an easily explained difference between people who are unemployed and people who think they are unemployed. “There is always going to he a difference", said a Government spokesman.

Well, that's alright then. There's a lot of people walking about Hammersmith—some of them are unemployed and some of them only think they are unemployed. Got it?

All right for some

Ever wondered how top executives get those fabulous pay rises we read about?

The Independent business section (2 May) provides “10 arguments commonly put before remuneration committees to justify large pay increases for the chief executive”.

What they all boil down to is contained in argument Number 10:

“You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". Mr B, the chairman of the remuneration committee, is keen to be generous to the chief executive, Mr A, because he has something to gain. Mr B, after all, is the chief executive of a company whose remuneration committee includes Mr A . . . Mr B hopes that if he raises Mr As pay, Mr A will return the favour by raising his pay when the time comes.

Just imagine if the trade unions decided one another's pay claims in this way, and just imagine the howls this would produce from those same top executives.

It’s a carve-up

A consortium of two shipyards, one on Clydeside and the other in Barrow-in-Furness, has won a £170 million contract to build a naval helicopter assault ship.

They undercut Swan Hunter on Tyneside by more than £50 million. This is an amazing amount and there have been furious claims on Tyneside that the successful bid must have been made below cost and with the aim of driving a competitor out of business.

If Swan Hunter does close then the Clydeside and Barrow yards will have the British warship market all to themselves, and this, despite what they all say about “welcoming competition”, is what every company dreams about.

Trained Youth

One of the nuttier ideas about at present is that crime, especially amongst the young, is caused by indiscipline. Anyone who has that idea should read about an extremely well-disciplined group of young workers— the British army's pride and joy: the Paras.

In the Independent on Sunday (16 May) we learn about one young man in the Parachute Regiment:

  He had his moments, nevertheless, and describes hard-drinking, brawling evenings, interspersed with elaborate rituals involving the consumption of vomit, urine and excrement. Such evenings would usually end with heart-felt renditions of "Lorelei” (“Tomorrow Belongs to Me”), “The Eullschirmjager Song", and “When We March on England”.

So there you have it. Singing Nazi storm-trooper songs, these well-disciplined hooligans are better organised than ill-disciplined hooligans anyday.

More confusion

A visitor to the SWP May Day rally at Alexandra Palace told the Independent (4 May):

  Last year I came for the first time, and I was just overwhelmed: so many people in the same room with the same ideas to talk and argue with. Really exciting.

Come again? Here is a party which recruits on the basis of single issues— troops out of Ulster, the right to work, national independence struggles, any strike, etc. In fact everything except the abolition of the wages system and its replacement by production for use, so it is hard to imagine that there could be “many people” at any SWP function “with the same ideas".

Proof? Ask any ten SWPers for a definition of socialism and you'll get ten different answers—and each will be more ridiculous than the last.

Putting the boot in

It was inevitable that many employers would use the recession to attack workers' wages and conditions, “Lucky To Have A Job” (BBC1, 17 May) showed just how far some of them have gone. Many workers must accept longer hours and less pay or be sacked. There are Essex milkmen who have to work a 70-hour week for no extra pay; full-time workers who are forced to go part-time; part-time workers put on “zero hour” contracts, which mean they only get any work when it suits their employer: and more.

The milkmen's boss justified the 70-hour week by claiming “they choose to do it for the social contact they enjoy”, while the boss of some zero hour workers said they could now “develop their hobbies and pastimes”.

Watching the smirking cynicism of the employers' spokesmen was galling enough for socialists, but what was worse was the meekness and resignation with which the workers involved accepted their lot.

Banks and the Crisis (1993)

From the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

If anything has underlined the capacity of the capitalist system for severe crisis bordering on disaster, it has been the recent report of the Bank of England admitting that in the last two years it had to launch a multi-million pound “lifeboat” fund to support financial institutions on the brink of bankruptcy. Although the Bank has refused to reveal exactly how much was spent on the operation, the Guardian (27 May) reported that “City bankers believe that more than £1 billion may have been used to bail out fewer than 10 institutions”.

The Bank first realized the true extent of the banking crisis in October 1990 and soon went on red alert. It eventually came to believe that over one in six UK financial institutions were at risk from the crisis. This was primarily because the economic slump and the collapse of BCCI provoked what has been described as a “flight into quality”, or towards the big five banks, at the expense of other institutions dependent on the so-called wholesale market where deposits come primarily from professional investors, many of whom were also involved in the slump-ravaged property sector.

The Bank’s report claims that its actions to avert a major banking crisis followed what it calls:

  substantial withdrawals of wholesale funding from smaller banking institutions arising out of a number of factors, including the pressure on banks in major overseas markets, notably America and Japan, the earlier closure of a number of other small British banks, followed by BCCI, and the reactions to those events by local authorities and other places of wholesale funds.

It is clear from the Bank’s report that a full 1970s-type banking crisis was a real prospect—and the report states that the Bank of England still has £115 million in provisions representing outstanding debts at risk.

Some of those banks bailed out by the Bank of England have since ceased trading. Some have effectively worked themselves out of a precarious position while others still depend on the facilities extended to them by the Bank.

Given the anarchy of the market system it is quite easy for a major financial catastrophe to occur under capitalism and shake the system to its roots. This has been amply demonstrated by the recent activities of the Bank of England, just as it was during the secondary banking crisis of the 1970s and, of course, during the major slump of the 1930s, which was exacerbated by the major banking crisis of 1932-3.

One thing is for sure—there can be no sustained economic recovery so long as corporate, personal and national debts are compounding at a rate faster than wealth production. Before the “green shoots” of recovery really start to grow there will have to be yet more bankruptcies, cheap takeovers and massive debt liquidation to ease the pressure on finance, investment and consumption. In truth, with debts in major capitalist states like Britain and the US at such unprecedented levels and with no really convincing signs of sustained economic recovery, the pressures on capitalism’s financial apparatus may be far from over.

Dave Perrin

Go For A Million! (1993)

Party News from the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Have you ever thought that the Socialist Party are just a lot of good talkers?

Are you itching to see some bigger things happen? Do you want to support us in our biggest campaign yet?

Our plans for the June 1994 Euro-election are now well underway. We will he putting up genuine Socialist candidates in four seats: Birmingham East, Glasgow, London Central and Lothians. These constituencies are nearly ten times the size of Westminster ones, so in our campaign we will effectively he contesting the equivalent of 37 British parliamentary seats. This will mean that over two million electors will have a first time ever chance to vote for the case for socialism.

In return for the £4000 deposits which we will pay, the Post Office will distribute our Socialist Manifesto to one million households. This will he the widest single circulation of socialist ideas in our history. Our aim will not be to win votes from people who do not agree with us, but to encourage the largest possible number of recipients of the manifesto to contact us, support us consciously and then join us.

We have already raised the £4000 for deposits. (This will allow us to reach a million households for much less than a penny each.) Now we need much more money so that we can print the manifestoes and carry out all of the exciting preparatory and follow-up work for the campaign. If ever there was a good time to make a donation to our funds it is now. Please send your contributions to Election Fund, The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN (and please make cheques payable to “The Socialist Party of Great Britain”).

In the months to come we will he publishing regular campaign updates. As our campaign gets closer we are going to need plenty of volunteers to help with the vital work of the campaign. This is our chance to “Go For A Million” and we are relying on the support of every supporter of the socialist objective to give the campaign the fullest backing.

The case against capitalism (1993)

From the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists are convinced that, as a mechanism for converting the world’s resources to the use of the world’s people, capitalism is fundamentally unworkable; that the system not only fails to find solutions to basic human problems, but by its nature presents impassable obstacles to the solution of those problems.

This conviction does not arise from an irrational hatred of capitalism and capitalists; Socialists acknowledge the success of capitalism in many ways. It is infinitely more productive, for example, than the static feudal system it replaced.

So why do Socialists argue that it is categorically not the best possible mode of production for the modern world? One reason is that certain anomalies arise out of the very nature of capitalism whereby the system is unable fully to utilize the forces of production it has helped to create. Goods are produced in the expectation of profit; when profit is realized it attracts more investment leading to increased production, competition and falling prices. At or before the point where goods cannot be sold at a profit, production will cease, regardless of all other considerations.

To take the argument out of the realms of theory we have only to look at the examples of food and housing; the lack of these is killing people in large numbers on a daily basis; the materials and labour to satisfy those needs are lying idle. The best that can be said for the system is that it is unable to connect these two facts (in practice action is taken to prevent the connection being made).

Reformism
Some entertain the idea that either you can deal with the evidently unattractive features of the system so that it works better for everyone or that you can modify it bit by bit until it becomes a different and better system. These reformists seem to think that capitalism is a game: that one day long ago somebody picked two sides, marked out the pitch and wrote a rule-book which could be amended if the same side kept winning all the time.

Of course, within the system there are various administrations and multitudinous laws but the idea that these can be used to make the system work counter to its natural tendency is sadly mistaken. Even aspects of capitalism which don’t seem to benefit anybody at all can’t be artificially controlled by those charged with administering it.

Consider this example: 1979—the party of law and order comes to power claiming that "Labour isn’t working”, taxes are too high, "the NHS is safe in our hands” etc. After a more than fair crack of the whip, crime, unemployment, taxes and prescription charges are all massively up for the majority. Can we attribute this to the cynicism of which politicians are so often accused? Of course not—with the possible exception of the one about the Health Service the Tories fully intended to keep all these promises. The fact is that politicians of all parties vying to administer capitalism are reduced to making election promises in keeping with their image and hoping the system will allow them to honour enough of them to salvage some credibility.

Is this, then, an example of failure? On the contrary, the present-day Tories have become electorally the most successful party this century on the back of a few minor triumphs of spectacular irrelevance to the working class, such as insulting European politicians, killing the workers of "foreign” countries in pointless arguments with their leaders, and allowing the odd fly-boy to become mildly rich in the glorified betting shops of the City of London.

The point is that, in capitalist society, truly significant policies are implemented, rather than decided, by those we are pleased to call our elected representatives. Some administrations, of course, are aesthetically more pleasant than others or, if you like making moral judgments, morally better than others, but if we look behind the surface appearances, they are all running the same system. A few years ago there was much talk of the need to get "Thatcher Out", and it can be agreed that among the many surface features of capitalism a psychopathic demagogue as Prime Minister is one of the least attractive. But I’ve yet to meet anyone who claims to be better off as a result ofToryism without an inhuman face.

Do we have to vote next time for the two faces of Labour to be reminded that there's no answer there either? There are no answers in capitalism for the working class because you won't get satisfactory answers by asking irrelevant questions. For the vast majority of the world’s population the answer is neither left-wing government nor right-wing government—it’s no government: not private, state or mixed ownership of the world’s resources, rather the common ownership which amounts to no ownership. And whether capitalist ownership is administered on a local, regional, national or international level will, on the whole, make no difference to the working class. By the very fact of this ownership, we will remain the subject class.

Two classes
At present there are only two classes: the minority ruling class of capitalists who determine the course of most peoples lives through their monopoly of the means of wealth production, and the majority subject class—the working class which is unable, in society as presently constituted, to stake any claim to the means of life except by selling its labour powrer to the owners of capital.

This does not mean that no capitalist ever does any useful work; for many reasons, not least the basic human need for stimulation, many capitalists work quite hard. But neither their privileged position in society nor their claim on the world's resources depends on any work they do, but on their exploitation of the working class. Neither does it mean that all workers work all the time; but it does mean that to ensure their survival workers must strive to sell their labour power.

In Britain not so long ago. and in some parts of the world today, if you were unable or unwilling to sell your labour power you would quite literally be left to die of poverty-related causes. In most developed countries today you will be kept alive in return for a promise to work when you are needed. But whether you have or haven’t got a job you will be left in no doubt about your class status. The media are full of stories of evictions, disconnections, people living on inferior diets, etc. The superficial message is usually “This type of thing shouldn’t be happening in 20th century Britain and your fearless reporters will expose this type of scandal wherever we find it!” The real message is "Just in case you were thinking of arguing with the boss, skipping the rent or mortgage, etc. remember this could be you”.

That, in a nutshell, is the negative side of the class division in capitalist society. The positive side is that the forces of production have grown so huge and complex that the ruling class is no longer able even to organize the exploitation of the workers; it has to employ workers to administer the system which exploits us so that for some time now the entire capitalist system is run from top to bottom by the working class on behalf of the capitalist class.

This is of crucial importance as it means the capitalist class would be totally powerless should the only other class in society identify the conflict of interests and act in its own best interest instead of finding common cause with its oppressors. Because the ruling class not only lives on wealth produced by the workers but is protected by armies consisting of workers and served by administrations staffed by, and largely elected by, workers, the only thing required for the working class to end its subjugation is that it recognizes its interest and acts on it.

One reason this does not happen is that the working class is fragmented and encouraged to recognize a variety of pseudo-interests and even pseudo-classes which cannot be defined in any meaningful way. Black people are told that white people can’t be trusted and vice-versa. People are brainwashed into believing they belong to nations whose boundaries are determined by their masters. Women are told that male oppression is responsible for their subjugation. Gods with various names, personalities and agendas are pressed into service. Any differences between people, whether they are as real as gender or as artificial as national boundaries, as deeply rooted as folk culture or as superficial as skin colour, will be exploited to prevent the working class from recognizing its unity.

All we have to do is take control of the resources and the machinery of administration we already run for the capitalists and run it for ourselves: the potential is there to improve the world and. if we acted as a class, the capitalists could not stop us doing this.

Socialism
There is no convincing evidence from history or science to suggest that, released from artificial constraints, humanity will act irresponsibly—indeed there is much to suggest that such irresponsibility as exists now is largely due to insecurity, frustration, alienation and other products of property society.

What Socialists can say, because of our understanding of the limiting features of capitalism, is that after the abolition of capitalism social production will be directly for the satisfaction of human needs, that distribution will involve free access to available wealth according to self-assessed needs; that buying, selling and money will play no part, thus preventing the accumulation of wealth; and that things will be administered by a participatory democracy far in advance of the political system we have at present. Socialists are convinced that humanity is capable of this.

John Usher

The slump in Germany (1993)

From the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

The optimism and euphoria that accompanied the reunification of Germany two- and-a-half years ago has evaporated. At the time Chancellor Kohl and other European politicians talked of the coming of yet another economic miracle, not only for a unified Germany but for the whole of the EC.

So confident was Kohl of success that he decided to give the East German currency parity with the West German Deutschmark, in spite of warnings from the Bundesbank officials of the inflationary consequences that would ensue. German social welfare payments were also extended to the whole of East Germany. The result was an increase in the purchasing power of the formerly poorly-paid East German workers who rushed to spend the newly-upgraded currency on goods previously unavailable to them. The extension of welfare payments to the East German population has been estimated to cost the German Treasury DM 170 billion per year.

These measures did not, however, make up for the obsolete nature of East German industry, where manufacturing production has failed to catch up with that of West Germany (see graph). Eighty percent of railways in the East were still steam-driven at the time of unification. East German workers, although paid in DMarks, still get lower wages than their West German counterparts. Inevitably, they have taken strike action to obtain comparable wages.

Steel workers have recently managed to obtain an increase in wages from about 60 per cent of western levels to 80 percent this June and 90 percent by October 1994 (Wall Street Journal, 24 May). These concessions have been obtained against a background of a severe crisis in the European steel industry that has already forced two western German steel companies—Kloeckner Werke AG and Saarstahl AG—into bankruptcy proceedings. Effective unemployment in eastern Germany is up at 30 percent. "German industrial output is now 7 percent below last year", according to the Sunday Times (28 March).

The automobile industry is also being hard hit by the depression:

  Results from Daimler Benz, Volkswagen and BMW are among their worst on record, reflecting world-wide recession and the rapid deterioration of the German economy. Volkswagen, Europe's largest car manufacturer, lost DM 1.25bn (£503m) in the first three months of the year after sales fell by 23 percent in Germany and more than 17 percent across Europe as a whole . . . Volkswagen plans to cut 12.500 jobs over the next two years, while Daimler is shedding 7 percent of its 367,000 workers" (Daily Telegraph, 14 May).

With the inevitable rise in welfare spending accompanying rising unemployment and immigration estimated at 500,000 per year, pressures to cut government spending have developed.

Worsening deficit

The German deficit for the state sector will amount to over 8 percent of GNP this year, which is similar to that in the UK. in order to try to maintain stability against a background of runaway public spending the Bonn government signed a solidarity pact with the local governments of the western and eastern regions:

  Under the terms of the pact the government agreed to certain measures in return for restraint. Income tax is to increase in 1995, but so does public borrowing for Eastern Germany in order to help restructure the obsolete industries there. It was also accepted as part of the pact that there would be no cut in social spending in the economies pursued by the government (Daily Mail, City & Finance. 5 May).

Since the pact was signed, however, there has been a marked change in outlook for the German recovery that these measures among others were supposed to help. According to the Economist (19 May), "the budget deficit is rising alarmingly as recession cuts revenue and drives up unemployment. Unless the government cuts spending its finances will deteriorate further. The Finance Minister T. Waigel has proposed cuts of DM 20bn annually beginning next year”.

Leaking boat

Much of the propaganda extolling the benefits of a unified Europe have suggested that subsidies to ailing industries would help smooth over cyclical downturns, the euphemistic term used by orthodox economists who do not wish to acknowledge the worsening features of recession.

Subsidies have certainly not helped Germany or other European states in difficulty. The crucial restructuring of Europe’s stricken steel industry is in danger of total collapse, leaving British steel struggling against unfair competition from heavily subsidised Continental producers, has warned Industry Minister Tim Sainsbury:

  Mr Sainsbury told his counterparts that Spain and Italy ran the risk of undermining the whole restructuring programme “unless they finally agreed to reduce public funding of their loss-making steel producers as well as to implement radical cuts in capacity" (Daily Telegraph, 5 May).

The German Economics Ministry now forecasts that the western German economy will shrink by at least one percent this year. The vision of Germany as a strong economy at the centre of Europe is fading. "Investors have concluded that Germany is in the same leaking boat as other members of the ERM", commented the Financial Times (22 May). “Unification has swept away its financial stability and the historic strength of the German current account; inflation is now well entrenched; and the all-German unemployment rate is the highest in the EC".

Compounding Germany’s economic difficulties further is its exposure as a result of huge loans to Eastern Europe. It is estimated that total loans to Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia by German firms had reached almost $2 billion by the end of 1992. Many banks loans to these regions are not receiving any returns on their investments. Total exposure to Russian banks, hardly the most secure, is greater than that of all the rest of Europe combined.

Interest rates

Many government spokesmen throughout Europe are urging the Bundesbank to lower interest rates in order to bring about European recovery. The fact that interest rates in the US are at their lowest since the 1930s with no major recovery occurring is not explained. The Bundesbank sees its primary function as to prevent inflation, and the fear is that reducing interest rates will revive it. Memories of Weimar and runaway inflation die hard.

The depression has come to Germany and is deepening. The problems of Germany are the problems of Europe and are ultimately caused by the present world slump. The idea that the Maastricht Treaty can overcome these problems is absurd. For the Treaty to work it would have to be assumed that the competing economic powers in Europe have common interests. The violent movements of currency markets, in spite of central banks losing millions trying to restore stability, is indicative of the futility of trying to adjust or solve the problems of capitalism by altering interest rates.

One disturbing feature of Germany’s plight is the revival of rightwing movements. "Opinion polls show a steady increase for parties of the extreme right led by the Republicans", according to the Financial Times (German Survey, 26 October 1992). Failure of the capitalist politicians to solve the problems that result from the depression has led to widespread disaffection with the major political parties. Refugees in Germany are being blamed for unemployment and housing shortages and have become the focus for attacks by neo-Nazi skinheads.

The problems developing in Germany have happened or are developing in other parts of Europe, namely, rising unemployment, falls in production, bankruptcies, growth in extreme rightwing racist movements along with public spending crises. These problems do not develop or emerge exactly simultaneously in each country, but the overall trend is there.

The problems occurring in Europe are fundamental to the capitalist system. When the working class world-wide understand and accept this then the remedy will be the abolition of the system that puts countries and peoples against each other either on the marketplace or on the battlefield.

Terry Lawlor

It's no joke (1993)

From the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Browsing through the local library recently—us “dole scroungers" really know how to live it up—I came across a coffee-table-sized book titled A History of Class. I offered up a silent thank you to whoever had had the foresight to order and stock a book which might allow the casual browser to discover something about the continuing class struggle both now and through the ages.

When I was much younger and had fallen off my bike for the umpteenth time and went into the house blarting my eyes out. my dad used to say to me. “you’ll have much worse than that before you’re finished". Admittedly, I don’t think he had in mind discovering that I had misread the title of a library book, A History of Class was. in fact, A History of Glass!

Peter Ashby, principal consultant for the research company, Full Employment UK, aired his version of making the jobless earn their dole in the Daily Telegraph of 21 January. There is no doubting which side of the class divide Mr Ashby belongs to. He said:

  We need to move away from the old Beveridge notion that you have an income-based safety net for the unemployed. Instead we need to create a work-based safety net. Society would say after this period of unemployment. it's no longer acceptable to us for people to be outside the process of work.

His company had, he said, done research which found that:

  Once people had been out of work for a year, quite a rapid process of psychological decline sets in. People’s self esteem begins to plummet and they talk themselves out of the ability to get back into employment. Then if they get an interview they will under-perform to such a degree that they are unlikely to get the job. Others burrow into the hidden economy accepting the risk that that entails.

As my dad used to say, “if you’ve made a mistake, be big enough to admit it". After all these years of despising the British ruling class—that’s the two percent of the population who own or control the factories, the transport industry, the construction industry, the food industry, the banks, the service industries and the farming industry—I now realize that most members of that class deserve sympathy for their low self-esteem and the psychological damage suffered by them for never having worked. The rest of us, the working class, should be grateful that we have no choice but to sell our labour power—our physical and mental skills—because, obviously, being economically exploited by a minority class is what keeps us sane in an insane world. Unless, of course, capitalism is going through one of its periodic crises of overproduction better known as a slump. The psychological, emotional and economic consequences of suddenly becoming an unpaid wage-slave as opposed to a paid one are well documented.

Many years ago when I was at school, April the First was always a day to be approached with caution. Although the sensitivity of an adolescent was likely to be wounded at times, on that day it was even more galling to fall foul of an April Fool’s trick. As I recall, the deadline for catching out the unsuspecting was midday.

Earlier this year, my local paper reported that Lady Cobham, wife of the local, titled. squire, had been appointed to the board of the London Docklands Development Corporation and to the board of British Waterways. She was given these jobs by Michael Howard, Secretary of State for the Environment. Her ladyship is also president of the Heart of England Tourist Board. A spokesperson said Lady Cobham was delighted with the appointments but did not wish to comment further. The reason for the reticence? The one "job" pays £6,140 a year for half-a-day’s “work" a week. The other “job” pays £8.000 a year for a day’s “work” a week. As my dad used to say, “Them as have got, will get”.

Are you filled with moral outrage? Does it seem grossly unjust to you that someone should receive that amount of money for doing so little when millions are on the dole and across the country workers are agreeing to pay cuts simply to keep their jobs? Or are you envious that opportunities to make such easy money don’t fall into your lap? Or are you simply indifferent because that’s the way thing are and they'll never change? The story was carried in February, not on April First, but the joke continues to be on the working class.

Fitted carpets

Worcester Park is a well-heeled Surrey suburb where John Major lived until he was twelve. Not much likelihood of “dole scroungers” inhabiting that part of the world surely? But in a capitalist world no-one is immune from the effects of market forces. The Telegraph Magazine carried a report on 7 November on the devastating effect of the recession there:

  Lady Olga Maitland, newly elected MP for Sutton and Cheam which includes most of Worcester Park, described her constituency as "a third world, neither town nor country, inhabited by secure, safe, clean, decent, honest people. Salaries range from £14,000 to £30,000. This is absolutely middle England. in income, lifestyle and ambitions, people are uncomplaining. They take pride in stability. They are house proud, with nice kitchens, fitted carpets, central heating, and go to a lot of trouble to make sure the curtains tone".

It is easy to sneer at such "middle-class” aspirations but there are, no doubt, thousands of fellow wage-slaves who would like nothing better than to exchange their poverty-stricken lifestyles for nice

kitchens. fitted carpets and central heating.They would be eager, given the opportunity, to sell their labour power for two hundred and fifty quid a week, let alone for one-and- a-half days. What’s wrong with wanting decent housing, decent education, decent health care and a crime-free society? Who could argue with that? Are the inhabitants of Worcester Park and elsewhere in this island asking yet whether a society based on the economic exploitation of the majority by a minority, a society based upon production for profit not need, a society subject to the demands and whims of market forces, can ever provide the not unreasonable needs of individuals and society as a whole? The joke has gone on long enough and if we don't utilize the power which we possess as a class we might all die crying.

Think of the number of fans at a Saturday Premier League football match. If they were all committed to the introduction of a society based upon free access could they be ignored? Think of the number of workers on the dole. If they understood the reasons why capitalism has to go, to be replaced by a society which no longer screws people in every aspect of their lives, could they be ignored? Strength lies not only in numbers but in an understanding and an overwhelming desire to exercise the political power which the working class possesses. The means to abolish for ever the psychological traumas which living in a capitalist society induces. The inequality, the unfairness, the pressure of the state to conform, and the economic exploitation of the majority by the minority, are waiting for the working-class majority to say, the unfunny joke is over—let’s create a world with real laughter in it.

Dave Coggan

Letters: IRA bombers (1993)

Letters to the Editors from the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

IRA bombers

Dear Editors,

I feel that your article in June’s Socialist Standard on the IRA’s bombing campaign completely misses the point.

Firstly, you are wrong to imply the specific problems of Irish Catholics in Ulster are caused by capitalism: capitalism exists all over the world but Catholics do not suffer the systematic discrimination they suffer in this sectarian state protected by British troops.

Secondly, it is wrong to say the IRA is fighting specifically for a united Ireland. Their most important objective is equality and an end to discrimination against Catholics, this then becomes a demand for an end to British rule as it is Britain that props up the system. In fact the Eire Government is no friend of Sinn Fein and has supported Republicanism only as far as Irish public opinion has forced it to. It is unlikely the IRA has a utopian view of a united Ireland.

Finally, you describe the IRA as terrorists, which is misleading. It is the British State that does by far the most terrorising: some 30,000 troops and 50,000 police and paramilitaries on the street, and Loyalist assassination gangs are all used to intimidate republicans. Surely as an “anti-British” party, as all British socialist parties must be, you should be concentrating on the brutality of the British state in crushing legitimate demands for equality rather than the understandable reaction to it by Irish Catholics.

J. Davey

Nottingham

Reply:

This is the first time we've heard anybody claim that the IRA is not fighting specifically for a united Ireland, but you’re right about the British Army being the biggest terrorist group in Ulster. As to the problems facing Catholics, discrimination over voting, council houses and public sector jobs has now largely gone; what remains—unemployment, bad housing, poverty—is also suffered by Protestants and is clearly caused by capitalism— Editors.

Sexual politics

Dear Editors,

Re Carl Pinel’s article “The Roots of Gay Oppression” (May Socialist Standard), being Gay can often be an isolating experience which often supercedes any political ideology, creating a climate where any political activity by Lesbians and Gay men is often concerning the fight against our own oppression. This is usually our most immediate and primary concern simply because it is the most immediate and constant threat to our everyday lives, even from those we would otherwise regard as comrades.

Where it is true that it is the solidarity of the working class that will bring about the downfall of capitalism, it would be wrong to condemn the work of any minority-biased pressure group, as homophobia, as well as racism and sexism, is a working-class disease too!

Stephen Webb 

Salford

Reply:

As part of our campaign to spread socialist understanding we oppose racism, sexism, nationalism, homophobia and other prejudices that divide the working class—Editors.

Between the Lines—Female Equality

Dear Editors,

I write regarding a piece in the June Socialist Standard “Between the Lines—Female Equality". This dealt with a "40 Minutes” TV programme about female recruits to the Australian Army being treated as “a lump of shit” and sneered that this is the sort of thing that women want in the way of equality.

I think this treatment of a very small minority of women who may wish to take up occupations more usually taken by men was a trivilisation of the legitimate aims of many women to be treated on equal terms with men, albeit within the confines of an unequal society, in terms of the home, and their wages, conditions and advancement in their work.

To dismiss women's equality in this way is both misleading and offensive to women within the Socialist Party and those who may come into contact with us.

Phyllis Hart

Surrey

Reply:

Obviously, we’re not against women getting equal treatment with men under capitalism, but how can we who condemn men for joining the armed forces (and have encouraged our own members to be conscientious objectors) regard women becoming trained killers as a desirable example of equality?— Editors

Between the Lines: To Hell with Charity (1993)

A Tory B’Stard

The Between the Lines column from the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

To Hell with Charity

Socialists want a society without charity. The function of charity is to throw crumbs at the poor and pity at the disadvantaged. People First (C4, 8pm. 8 June) showed how a growing number of workers classified as disabled are sick of being the recipients of crumbs and pity. Their particular target, which has long been attacked in this column, are the patronising TV charity telethons in which company directors give cheques for a few thousand pounds (in return for a positive mention of their companies) and workers engage in stupid and humiliating stunts in order to raise in pennies what the average capitalist would spend without thinking twice on a good lunch.

Under capitalism disabled workers are usually poor because the bosses can milk less profits out of them than fitter, more agile wage slaves. They are disadvantaged because the social environment is built for the requirements of the physically fit and the cost of adding lifts and ramps to public places is not profitable enough. So, to ease the social conscience there are these annual displays of money-collecting and expressions of concern for those whom capitalist logic would really prefer not to be alive at all.

It was inspiring to see disabled workers refusing to behave as grateful victims and demanding the dignity of being equals. But equality in wage slavery is not the answer. It will only be when humans are recognised for what they are and not what they have that all of us, regardless of shape, form or infirmity, will be free to share the world as a family of equals.

What Community?

The same night as the encouraging documentary about militant disabled workers, Newsnight (BBC2, 10.30pm) had a report, set in Oxford, about what has happened to people who have been released from psychiatric wards into so-called community care. It is like releasing goldfish into the desert waters. The fact is that there is no community. For there to be a community there would need to be a common human interest in society rather than the class division which currently exists. In an increasing number of cases it is the very absence of a sense of community life, and the consequent depression, which leads people to become mentally unstable. The state’s response is to throw these unfortunate people out into a cold and alienating world where they will exist in poverty and loneliness, with medication to keep them quiet (if they remember to give it to themselves). The Newsnight report showed how miserable and uncared for were those who have been sentenced to the scrapheap of bogus care in the bogus community.

Will the Real Alan B’Stard Please Stand Up?

Tory politicians come in all sorts, from wimpy Major, slobbish Clarke to Mad Maggie. One of the latter's closest friends was Alan Clark, the subject of a BBC2 documentary called Love Tory (7 June. 9pm). Clark is a vile old aristocratic character with the callousness of a Ridley, the smugness of an Owen and the muddled thinking of a Lamont. He is the man, should you have forgotten, who referred to blacks in Britain as having come from Bongo-bongo Land.

In the documentary he readily admitted to being a liar and openly stated that when he was a Minister of Employment in the Thatcher government none of his policies made any difference and that he did not believe the speeches written for him to read out in the House of Commons. His candidness comes from the fact that he is extremely rich (he lives off what he called "the income from my income”) and an arrogant belief that the proles are too stupid to do anything about it even if their rulers admit in public to conning them.

Earlier this year, in a Guardian interview, Clark stated that "the arguments for socialism are powerful. But it has never been put into practice properly . . . the social argument for socialism is not easy to refute” (9 January). The reality is that two hours in the debating ring with a socialist speaker and the complacent grin would soon be knocked off Alan Clark's face. He would discover that socialism is impossible to refute and that capitalism can only be sustained while rather more publicity-conscious crooks than him persuade the working class to continue donating to the biggest charity in the world which keeps useless idlers in privileged luxury while the rest of us have to produce the wealth.

Steve Coleman

50 Years Ago: Trade Unions in Wartime—And After (1993)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sir Stafford Cripps may now address the workers on Joint Production Committees as "comrades" but this will soon be forgotten when the struggle resumes its normal intensity in the scramble for markets and profits after the war. In spite of all the hopes of industrial peace, backed up by the powers of the Government under the various orders imposing industrial conscription and banning strikes, the number of trade disputes increased from 875 in 1938 to 940 in 1939, 922 in 1940. 1,251 in 1941, and 1,281 in 1942. The number of disputes is actually larger than in the last war. though the number of workers involved, and the number of days lost, are smaller—due to the fact that "the great majority of stoppages affected only individual establishments and were of short duration" (Ministry of Labour Gazette, January 1943). In spite of the elaborate arrangements to secure the reference of disputes to arbitration, there is ample evidence that trade unionists have not accepted the defeatist view that they can afford to renounce what is in the last resort their main if not their sole weapon, the strike.

(From the editorial in the Socialist Standard, July 1943.)

Economics is bunk (1993)

From the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Want to know how to pass the GCSE Economics exam? Then this is what you must do. Ignore the facts, blinker your mind and repeat the following parrot-fashion: all resources are scarce and always will be; human wants are unlimited and so can never be satisfied; without a class of entrepreneurs nothing can be produced.

In case you think we might be exaggerating, have a look at any course textbook. Here, for instance, is what I. L. Hobday lays down in the first lesson of his GCSE Economics in the Pan series "The Complete Guide to GCSE Exam Success":

  Unlimited consumer wants are greater than the quantity of factors of production (land, labour, capital and enterprise) available to produce goods and services.

He goes on:

   Consumer wants are unlimited. This means that consumers (i.e. anybody who buys or purchases) want food, shelter, clothes, etc. These wants are unending. For instance a consumer may want food, then more food and better food. Goods and services cannot, however, be produced in unending amounts because the factors of production (or resources) are themselves limited in supply. Therefore goods and services are scarce (which means limited in supply).

Whatever you do, don't let common sense interfere at this point and make you challenge the unsupported claim that "consumer wants are unlimited". Unlimited? This would mean that each and every one of us wants to consume the whole universe, a proposition that would be well-placed to win a prize in any competition for absurd statements.

Fake scarcity
The truth is, of course, that human wants are not "unlimited". "unending" or "insatiable". In practice what we want is relatively limited and quite reasonable. We want decent food, clothes, housing, household goods, travel facilities, health care and entertainment. What most people want is no doubt greater than what we are allowed to consume today as a result of the restrictions imposed by the size of our wage packets or salary cheques, but this is not at all the same as saying that our wants are unlimited.

The same goes for the claim that resources are scarce. This is just as absurd. Of course if wants really were unlimited then resources will always be insufficient to satisfy them—by definition. But this tells us nothing about the real world, about whether or not resources are in practice sufficient to satisfy people's actual—and relatively limited— wants. 

All the studies that have been done regarding people’s food needs have shown that resources are more than enough to meet them. And the same result can be expected to be reached if studies were done about the amount of clothes, housing, etc that people wanted. In any event, it is not good enough to lay down as a dogma—as the GCSE course does—that resources aren't sufficient for this. Facts to back up such a claim ought to be produced, but none of the economics textbooks ever do this.

And don’t challenge either the peculiar definition of "scarcity" as meaning what is "limited in supply”. Most of the resources needed to satisfy our wants, except perhaps the air we breathe and the rays of the sun, are limited in supply in an absolute sense, but that's not the same as saying that they are "scarce”, i.e. in short supply.

Just the opposite is the case. In relation to people's actual reasonable and limited wants, most resources are not in short supply, but are or could soon be made available in adequate quantities, in fact in more than adequate quantities. But. if you want to pass your GCSE Economics, you mustn’t mention this.

False factor
Pan Books' “Complete Guide to GCSE Exam Success" also tells you want to write about the "factors of production". Basically—we’re talking about the real situation now. not what you have to repeat to pass—for production to take place two “factors” are necessary: materials that originally came from Nature (“Land”) and the mental and physical energies and skills of human beings (“Labour”). The combination of these two is the source of all existing (and past) wealth. It is legitimate to distinguish a third “factor”—human-made instruments of production, which conventional Economics persists in calling, misleadingly, “Capital”—but only as long as it is recognised that this is derived, and can only be derived, from a combination of the first two.

But to pass your GCSE Economics you have to agree to the invention of a fourth “factor” called "Entreprise”. This, you must assert, is the key factor without which the others are useless. You must copy Hobday and write:

   Without the entrepreneur the other resources have no economic importance—they need to be brought together and organized for production.

If you refuse to sing this hymn of praise to the captains of industry and business men and women, then you can say goodbye to passing your GCSE exam. The last thing you must do is to ask whether, perhaps. Labour (which Hobday admits to be “the mental and physical human effort involved in the production process”) could not organise production on its own, without the entrepreneur.

Because if you did, you might come up with the common sense answer that, even today under the profit system, the actual work of production, from start to finish and from top to bottom, is carried out by workers applying their mental and physical energies to materials that originally came from Nature (either directly or as instruments of production fashioned from Nature by earlier generations of workers). All an entrepreneur does is look out for opportunities to make a profit and line their own pockets out of the wealth produced by Labour.

So, if you rteed to pass the GCSE Economics exam to have a chance of getting a better job. our advice is: write down the crap the examiners want to read—but don't believe a word of it.

Adam Buick

Why you should be a socialist (1993)

From the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Queen Mother gets some food stuck in her gob—headline news; but at least it wasn’t a fish bone this time.

Ten thousand children die of hunger—or was it a hundred thousand? They have starved in a world where farmers are paid to throw food away and “set-aside” land because there are too few people with money to buy it.

Continuing the Royal theme. Granny Parasite’s daughter, Lizzy the Second, is currently paid £300,000 a year by the Common Market as a subsidy for not growing food on her land. She is just one of thousands of privileged owners who are paid to destroy what other people need.

These starving kids whose last screams of uneconomical need hardly ever make the headlines—why should they perish in a world of plenty?

Why: the longest word in the English language. A subversive word. It can only be a matter of time before it is removed from the National Curriculum (what the government wants us to be taught). Too many people asking “Why” and they might just start coming up with some answers.

The pot-bellied corpses, whose skeleton mountains are the mirror reflection of the food mountains, are the real monuments to the profit system. Nelson stands like a frozen relic from a fancy dress ball, commemorating for wage slaves the wars that their forefathers were butchered in, but the real centrepiece symbol of this system should be a dead baby whose mother watched as nourishing food and clean water were labelled as “bad investments”.

So why is it such a good investment for millions of workers every day to give our mental and physical energies so that a relative handful of millionaires and billionaires may live off the fruits of our labour? Who put the food into the Queen Mother’s mouth—and why should we?

In a world where workers on tea plantations could never afford to have tea at the Ritz and gold miners cannot afford basic dental treatment, let alone gold fillings, why should we, the wealth-producing majority, sit back and let a minority have it all?

It has been said that the rich and powerful are what they are because there is something of quality about them which we have not got. Is this so? Is it really the case that a child of one whose name was put down for Eton at the age of six months has a naturally greater right to the good life than a baby born to a mother who cannot feed it—or one of the third of all British children living on or below the poverty line?

Is the overfilled mouth of the Queen Mother really so much more worthy of social concern than the malnourished diets and poorly heated homes of the millions who survive on a state pensions? And if not, why do we not respond with as much energy when old workers perish in poverty as when old parasites survive to have ninetieth birthdays?

Why do we live in a world of such contradictions? Must it be like this forever?

We live in a social system. It has not always existed; it will not go on for ever. In this system there is a minority who own and control the major resources of the world. The majority of us, owning no more than our ability to work, have no choice but to work for the minority. We are paid wages and salaries which are less than the value of what we produce. The difference between what we produce and what we are paid goes to the capitalist minority as profit. We make—they take. It is a bloody good system for them. For us it is lousy.

Production for profit means that we work to make the owners richer. Our pay is enough to keep us on the working treadmill from week to week, month to month, year to year, cheap holiday to co-op funeral.

Why do the workers put up with it? Why did slaves put up with being owned by their masters? Rulers can lord it over us only as long as we think that they are more important than us. And every time we vote for their parties, admire their business operations. cheer their figureheads and refuse to think of a world where power belongs to everyone, we are proclaiming the view that our masters must remain our masters.

Why do we put up with it? We were taught to do so; we grew up with morals and religious gobbledygook which told us to submit; workers have been conditioned not only to be, but to want to be, second-class. Old Ernest Jones, the Chartist, summed it up well:

We're low—we’re low—we’re very, very low.
As low as low can be;
The rich are high—for we make them so—
And a miserable lot are we!

People who think that they are low will be treated low. That is why TV ads tell wage slaves attracted to the cheap proley fodder of Big Macs that they are "eating out in style”—working-class style; the lowest that can be produced. We live in low homes, drive low cars and read the low-down from the low-down tabloid lie-sheets.

The socialist is a worker who refuses to be a slave, to be low. to submit and cheer the foolery of a system which spits on us. The socialist knows that to be human is to be conscious, with a potential for creativity and cooperation. We can join together and live as equals in a world where all production is for use and all life for living, not buying and selling. The socialist refuses to lie down and take it; we know that united in our millions we will be so strong that the parasite class will be forced to surrender their privilege and either share the world with us or else leave it for another place.

But socialists were not born socialists. No member of the Socialist Party emerged from the womb complaining about wage slavery and singing The Internationale. Socialists are workers who once believed that Queen Mothers were important and bosses must own the world and children must starve and capitalism is the only way for humans to exist.

Socialists are dangerous men and women who asked the question “Why?” and hit on a revolutionary answer. They are people who could see that the profit system will never meet the workers’ needs and that a sane world of production for use would and could.

There can be no compromise between the agenda of the Queen Mothers over-stuffed mouth (or concern about the pound and who the Chancellor is and whether the British thieves sign a treaty with their fellow Euro-thieves) and the plight of the starving child, the poverty-stricken worker, the wage-slave for whom life under the money system is one long headache.

In short, you will never solve the problems of the poor if you allow the rich to keep the world for themselves. Only when the wealth-producing majority decide that we will all be rich, in the sense of commonly owning and democratically controlling the world we inhabit, will it all change.

What do workers need to do? To begin with, a lot of asking “Why?” When you hit on the answers you will be angry. So you should be—but anger on its own leads nowhere. What we need to do is unite, with knowledge as our weaponry and cooperation as our guarantee of victory. Why not join us? Why leave it any longer?

Steve Coleman

Bosnia—who started it? (1993)

Editorial from the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

“What do you expect? They’ve been at it for centuries” is a common reaction to the situation in Bosnia. as if it was somehow part of the nature of Balkan Man to kill, rape, burn and otherwise generally feud with neighbours just because they speak a different language or come from a different religious background.

Certainly Socialists condemn without reservation the murderous acts of all groups fighting in Bosnia, who have introduced a new and disgusting word— “ethnic cleansing”—into the language. But there is another side to the story.

Not so much now but until fairly recent times, the Balkans was a region of key strategic importance for the various competing capitalist powers. The rulers of Tsarist Russia dreamed of gaining control of the Bosphoros as an outlet to the Mediterranean. Imperial Germany, and its junior partner the Austro-Hungarian Empire, wanted to control the area to protect the planned Berlin to Baghdad railway and trade route to the Middle East. The British Empire had an interest in neither of these rival powers dominating the area and so pursued a policy of propping up the crumbling Ottoman Empire.

Each of these powers had its pawns in the region. Russia projected itself as the protector of the area’s Orthodox Christians (Serbs, Rumanians. Bulgarians). Austria played the Catholic card (Croats, Slovenes) while the Ottoman Empire relied on the Moslems (Turks, Albanians but also Slav-speakers, as in Bosnia).

These were the groups that were set against each other on the ground, as the various Empires vied for control of the Balkans. The so-called “historic” rivalry between these groups was artificially stirred up by the competing imperialist powers in the sixty or so years up until the First World War. And, as so often happens in these cases (we’ve seen it nearer home in Northern Ireland), once turned on such passions unleashed to serve capitalist interests can't be turned off just like that, however much some of the powers with a current interest in the area may now wish to.

The First World War led to the break-up of the German. Austrian, Russian and Ottoman Empires. An artificial state called “Yugoslavia” (literally, the Land of the South Slavs) was set up ruling over peoples speaking a variety of languages (mainly Serbian, Croatian. Slovenian and Macedonian). It was so unwieldly that it proved impossible to hold it together other than by dictatorship, before the war that of the Serb monarch and afterwards by Tito and his clique.

In practice Yugoslavia was Greater Serbia, but the death of Tito and then the overthrow of the state- capitalist regimes in the rest of Eastern Europe seriously weakened the Yugoslav regime. Greater Serbia began to shrink as the various provinces—Slovenia, Croatia, then Bosnia, then Macedonia—broke away. The capitalists of Slovenia and Croatia, as the most developed parts of the “former Yugoslavia”, had their own economic reasons for wanting to break away. But this wasn’t the only factor. In the background was the newly re-unified Germany, anxious to flex its muscles in its re-found role as the most powerful state in Europe—and anxious to recreate its former spheres of influence in eastern Europe and the Balkans.

Germany pressed the other European states and America to recognise Slovenia, Croatia and, with more difficulty, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The rulers of the former Greater Serbia decided to resist militarily, conquering a third of Croatia and two-thirds of Bosnia. This was not what the major capitalist states had intended and their response has simply been to try to contain the problem and stop it spreading to the rest of the Balkans, by holding the ring while their pawns of yesteryear battle it out amongst themselves.

If Socialists were stronger on the ground both here and in the Balkans we might be able to do something more than re-assert the principle that workers the world over have a common interest. As it is, all we can do is to place on record our abhorrence of this latest manifestation of capitalist barbarity and call upon our fellow workers in Bosnia not to be led by war-mongers into slaughtering each other. That way they certainly have no future.

The Old Bill and the new Tony (1993)

Ilustration by George Meddemmen.

From the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the traditions of British politics is that the Tories are in favour with the police, the prison officers and all aspiring hangers and dispensers of corporal punishment because they believe they take a strong line on Law and Order. Another tradition is that the Labour Party are not popular in those same quarters because they are soft on crime and criminals, in accordance with some theory that we live in a class-divided society and the penal system is there to protect the interest of the ruling class and keep the working class in their place.

So how do we explain the fact that Kenneth Clarke, in one of his last public appearances as a Conservative Home Secretary, was so frostily received by the Police Federation conference in May while on the following day his Labour shadow, Tony Blair, was rapturously applauded? Blairs speech was described by the Federation chairman as “superb"; one of the Federation officers thought he had come close to the ultimate achievement of a standing ovation. In contrast, Clarke was described by one policeman as “an arrogant, rude Tory snob”. Since arrogant and rude is how many people experience police behaviour we can infer that Clarke had dared to disagree with the delegates.

It was not through any penetrating analysis of the causes of crime and the role of the police in capitalism that Blair won his applause. What he did was to reassure the nation’s finest that a Labour government would be tough on crime and would give the police, who are feeling a trifle beleaguered at the present time, a lot of what they have been asking for but did not look like getting from Clarke. On one issue. Clarke seemed to be bent on making it easier to support allegations of misconduct by the police. Now this is a matter of—how shall we put it?—some delicacy, as hardly a week goes by without some fresh revelation about innocent people being stitched up by the police and clapped behind bars as a result—sometimes for very long periods.

As a barrister Blair might have been expected to recognize that, even by the corrupt and decadent standards of capitalism, something is seriously wrong with the police. After all, it is not beyond imagining that a shadow minister might one day find himself on the receiving end of planted incriminating evidence or apparently signing a confession to some heinous crime they haven’t committed. But no: he assured the massed ranks of the Federation that he is not in favour of tampering with the present set-up. Before they began clapping, the police heaved a huge sigh of relief.

The Old Bill

Then there was the matter of crime—or rather that bit of it which finds its way into police records. Year by year it goes up and up, no matter how many more police there are or how many new laws or how much harsher the penalties. Blair had to tread a wary path here—after all it is a Labour Home Secretary that he hopes to be and he has to think about his reception at the next party conference where some of the delegates may have felt police truncheons on their heads on the picket line or on a demonstration. So while he makes a passing acknowledgement that the extremes of poverty, unemployment and poor housing have their effect on crime—which even the police have recently come to accept—he modified this:

no one but a fool would excuse the commission of a crime on the grounds of the individuals upbringing.

And then, criticizing the current disarray in what is known as the criminal justice system he gave an implied promise which would not have come amiss from Thatcher herself:

It cannot be the right way to start by imposing a freeze on (police) recruitment.

No wonder they cheered him. And in case there were any lingering doubts about whether the Old Bill really do love the New Tony, Blair said he supported testing the side-handled batons as seen on TV when the Los Angeles police were shown beating up Rodney King—tests which Clarke had refused.

There is a simple answer to the question why the police should be so much keener on this prospective Labour Home Secretary than they were on the Tory who held that office. Blair has made no secret of his view that the Labour Party must be ready to make whatever changes or abandonments to its policies which are necessary to win power. He knows—he would be insensitive to his audiences in a way for which barristers are not famous—how strong are the prejudices which arise from that tradition about Tory strength and Labour weakness on Law and Order. So he makes adjustments. This twisting may infuriate some members of the Labour Party. If so, it is time they faced the fact that they support a party which stands for capitalism and that winning power to run this society does not come from holding to principles.

Home office

They might also learn that there is no evidence to support that prejudice about Labour being soft on crime. For example, the "short, sharp shock” (which really meant mindless brutality and repression) was to be applied in the detention centres that were the brainchild of the 1945 Attlee government. Labour was in power when the Metropolitan Police—for which the police authority is the Home Office—introduced the notorious, rampaging Special Patrol groups. A similar development in the prison service, again under a Labour government, was the MUFTI squads, which quickly established a reputation for fearsomely dealing with recalcitrant prisoners. One of the achievements of the ever- so-cultured-and-liberal Roy Jenkins as a Labour Home Secretary was the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which did not prevent terrorism but which did restrict many of the safeguards of the rights of people under arrest by the police. What it amounts to is that no Labour Home Secretary has ever shirked doing whatever capitalism has demanded of them.

That, after all. is the function of all the organs of government among which the Home Office is of first importance. The name, so comforting, is misleading because the Home Office is responsible for a massive coercive machine—the Law, police, prisons, control of “aliens” and the like. In its wilder moments it might see itself as the guardian of public morality and safety even if it is difficult to see people like Kenneth Clarke in that role. Anyone—like Clarke who gets the job of Home Secretary is supposed to be very close to becoming Prime Minster, except that there are plenty of examples of ambitious politicians—Rab Butler. Roy Jenkins. Leon Brittan are just a few—for whom the job was close to their political grave.

Youthful

But, no doubt, Blair takes a more optimistic view of his chances. There is no lack of media encouragement to him to do so. Christened Anthony Charles Lynton Blair he decided—like Anthony Wedgwood Benn—that plain Tony was a name much more voter-friendly. He rose through choir school, Fettes College and Oxford to became a barrister in 1976. He got into Parliament for Sedgefield in 1983, when Michael Foot was laying waste to Labour’s dreams of ousting the Thatcher government. His clubs—a nice thoughtful touch this—are not Brooks or Whites or the Athenaeum but Trimdon Colliery and Deaf Hill Working Men’s and Fishburn Working Men's.

Blair burst onto the political scene as a bright-eyed, irrepressible young debunk specialist on TV. Perhaps his boyish looks were considered too youthful to reassure the voters because recently Blairs manner has been more subdued and weighty, as would be expected from someone who wants to be minister in charge of arresting workers who break the law, locking up tens of thousands of them and keeping the numbers of immigrants at a level acceptable to the prejudices of the voters. That is why Blair has come up with that statement which although suffering from an in-built inconsistency is crafted to appease both sides of the argument about crime—he wants to be tough on crime and tough on its causes.

Blair would not be the first politician to evade his party’s policies while appearing to implement them. That is how he won the approval of the police and how he hopes to win the approval of the Labour Party, who will doubtless give it to him if they see that he attracts the votes. And then all he has to worry about is winning the approval of the voters, who remain vulnerable to so many kinds of trickery and deceit. Then this one-time choirboy can sing in the bath at Number Ten.

Ivan

Obituary: Jack Moore (1993)

Obituary from the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to announce the death of our comrade Jack Moore in Evenley, the Northamptonshire village where he moved after his retirement. Jack Moore joined the Socialist Party in 1941 after a brief period in the Labour Party. After the war he was an active member of the old Bloomsbury and Camden branch. An architect by training, he lectured for many years on architectural acoustics at the Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster). He was a recognised expert in this field and from time to time contributed articles on noise and on housing, but also on economic questions, to the Socialist Standard. He also designed the front covers of a number of pamphlets the Party produced in the 50s, 60s and 70s. After he moved away from London he continued to contribute to Party activity by becoming the secretary of the committee dealing with postal applications to join our Central Branch, and many of those joining this branch in recent years will no doubt recall corresponding with him.

The beauty myth (1993)

From the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Stay young and beautiful/If you want to be loved" runs the old song. Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth is, among other things, a book about the way women and men are manipulated by a system based on property and profit. She covers in depth the various manifestations of an imposed and unpredictable beauty ideal for women—at work, in the media, in health and most importantly as a hugely inappropriate low self-esteem felt by, probably, a majority of women.

Women have traditionally been seen to be vain, that is, overly concerned with their appearance. What has not been recognized is the extent to which this "vanity" is in fact a manifestation of a feeling of personal inadequacy. Women feel inadequate to the task of matching the latest fashionable ideal of "beauty", the achievement of which, alone, can make them feel acceptable—to their lovers, the world at large and to themselves.

This ideal has varied from the voluptuous Rubenesque-type figure to the anorexic "Twiggy" of the '60s and '70s. Whatever it is at any one time it can never be achieved by most women, since all women vary in size, shape and appearance.

Naomi Wolf puts the problem down to two phenomena—one is the power relation between men and women and the other is the demand of commerce. Women's lack of self-esteem serves any desire men may have to control women's lives, since someone with low self-esteem is more manipulable than someone who is confident. It also serves the demands of commerce, since the sale of beauty products and plastic surgery is dependent upon women feeling they are nor beautiful enough as they are.

Property relationship

Any desire on the part of men to control women's lives needs to be regarded seriously as it is a threat to the possibility of democracy and equality between all people and hence represents a serious obstacle to the achievement of socialism. From a young age, males are taught that in order to be "masculine", that is, in order to feel adequate, they must dominate women, or at the very least, appear to.

Keeping someone's self-esteem low is the one way of maintaining dominance and the impossible demands of the beauty myth serve this purpose well. The wish to dominate women is very much tied up with property. It is likely that, with the emergence of property society, women came to be regarded as men's property alongside land, animals, slaves and so on. One of the main features of a piece of property is that it (she) is under the owner's (his) control.

The property basis of relations between men and women is constantly under threat, since women are on the whole strong and intelligent human beings whom men often feel inclined to genuinely love and respect. The lengths to which societies have gone to keep women under control, are quite extraordinary—clitoradectomy, foot-binding, malnutrition, enforced childbearing, institutionalized wife-beating, death by stoning . . . the list is endless. The demands of "beauty" represent just one, primarily psychological, means of control.

The other thread of the problem is peculiar to late 20th century capitalism; the requirement of business to make money has led to the development of highly advanced psychological manipulative techniques. The beauty ideal is being thoroughly exploited in this respect.

Naomi Wolf has this to say on the subject of ageing in women:

When grey and white reflect in her hair  . . . you could call it silver or moonlight  . . . she is darker, stronger, looser, tougher, sexier. The maturing of a woman who has continued to grow is a beautiful thing to behold.

The point of this passage is to show the extent to which we are usually manipulated into seeing the ageing process in a negative way. Men and women alike are conditioned to see "beauty" and hence "loveability" in a woman within the framework of an ideal which involves looking "young" and "slim". The extent to which women will go, and in some cases are expected to go, to try and fit this ideal, is frightening.

Commercial pressures

Cosmetic surgery in the USA is commonplace and is being commercially pushed in Europe. Cosmetic surgery involves a good deal of pain and actual damage to the human body. It has occasionally been fatal. It affects the physical health of the person undergoing it adversely. "If your ad revenue or your seven figure salary or your privileged sexual status depend on it, it [ageing in women] is an operable condition".

One of women's main enemies in this respect is ironically also one of women's best friends—the women's magazine. These days filled with articles and comment on interesting contemporary topics, the women's magazine unfortunately also reinforces that impossible, undermining expectation of beauty so thoroughly described by Naomi Wolf.

The main reason for this is 20th century capitalist commercial practice.

The magazines are dependent for revenue upon advertizing and the editorial content of the magazines must reflect this. A magazine which does not push "beauty" is threatened with loss of revenue from advertizing. Cosmetic surgery is the latest ghastly trend in this scenario.

This exemplifies capitalism's ultimate double bind—that, in order to meet people's needs, it must first be ruthless to them, since a business, or "going concern", must put money-making before all else in order to ensure its continued existence. And without its continued existence it cannot meet any human needs at all.

Naomi Wolf's proposed solution is another wave of feminism. Like the trades union movement, the feminist movements of this century have been useful in fighting for improved conditions within the framework of capitalism. However, as with trade unionism, feminism's successes are always under threat of sabotage or outright reversal. The real solution to women's oppression lies within a framework of a completely different economic system, one not based on property and the pursuit of profit.

Nicky Snell